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Dynamics of Contention

Dissatisfied with the compartmentalization of studies concerning strikes, wars,revolutions, social movements, and other forms of political struggle, McAdam,Tarrow, and Tilly identify causal mechanisms and processes that recur acrossa wide range of contentious politics. Critical of the static, single-actor models(including their own) that have prevailed in the field, they shift the focus ofanalysis to dynamic interaction. Doubtful that large, complex series of eventssuch as revolutions and social movements conform to general laws, they breakevents into smaller episodes, then identify recurrent mechanisms and proces-ses within them. Dynamics of Contention examines and compares eighteen con-tentious episodes drawn from many different parts of the world since theFrench Revolution, probing them for consequential and widely applicablemechanisms, for example, brokerage, category formation, and elite defection.The episodes range from nineteenth-century nationalist movements to con-temporary Muslim–Hindu conflict to the Tiananmen crisis of 1989 to disin-tegration of the Soviet Union. The authors spell out the implications of theirapproach for explanation of revolutions, nationalism, and democratization,then lay out a more general program for study of contentious episodes wher-ever and whenever they occur.

Doug McAdam is Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and DirectorDesignate of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Hisprevious books include Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,1930–1970 (1982, 1999) and Freedom Summer (1988), which shared the 1990C. Wright Mills Award and for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowshipto support research.

Sidney Tarrow received his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeleyin 1965, where he studied comparative politics and did the research for hisfirst book, Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (1967). He taught at Yale andCornell before becoming Maxwell Upson Professor of Government (and thenalso of Sociology) at Cornell. He specializes in European politics and socialmovements and recently (with Doug Imig) has completed a collective volumeentitled Contentious Europeans.

Charles Tilly (Ph.D. in Social Relations, Harvard, 1958) is Joseph L. Butten-wieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. His recent booksinclude European Revolutions (1993), Popular Contention in Great Britain (1995),and Durable Inequality (1998), for which he received the 2000 DistinguishedScholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association.

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Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics

EditorsDoug McAdam Stanford University and Center for Advanced

Study in the Behavioral SciencesSidney Tarrow Cornell UniversityCharles Tilly Columbia University

Ronald Aminzade et al., Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics

Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention






Dynamics of Contention

DOUG MCADAMStanford University

SIDNEY TARROWCornell University

CHARLES TILLYColumbia University






PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGEThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, VIC 3166, AustraliaRuiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, SpainDock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa


© Cambridge University Press 2001

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface Janson Text Roman 10/13 pt. System QuarkXPress [BTS]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataMcAdam, Doug.

Dynamics of contention / Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-521-80588-0 – ISBN 0-521-01187-6 (pb.)1. Collective behavior. 2. Social movements. 3. Revolutions.

4. Democratization. I. Tarrow, Sidney G. II. Tilly, Charles. III. Title.HM866 .M23 2001303.48¢4 – dc21 2001016172

ISBN 0 521 80588 0 hardbackISBN 0 521 01187 6 paperback






To the CASBS staff,for their unique combination of wisdom,tolerance, and effectiveness.






ix

Contents

List of Figures and Tables page xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

Abbreviations xix

Part I: What’s the Problem?

1. WHAT ARE THEY SHOUTING ABOUT? 3

2. LINEAMENTS OF CONTENTION 38

3. COMPARISONS, MECHANISMS, AND EPISODES 72

Part II: Tentative Solutions

4. MOBILIZATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 91

5. CONTENTIOUS ACTION 124

6. TRANSFORMATIONS OF CONTENTION 160

Part III: Applications and Conclusions

7. REVOLUTIONARY TRAJECTORIES 193

8. NATIONALISM, NATIONAL DISINTEGRATION, AND CONTENTION 227

9. CONTENTIOUS DEMOCRATIZATION 264

10. CONCLUSIONS 305

References 349

Index 371






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List of Figures and Tables

Fig. 1.1 The Simple Polity Model page 11Fig. 1.2 The Classic Social Movement Agenda for

Explaining Contentious Politics 17Fig. 2.1 A Dynamic, Interactive Framework for Analyzing

Mobilization in Contentious Politics 45Table 3.1 Distribution of Episodes by Geography and

Conventionally Assigned Forms of Contention 76

Fig. 3.1 Location of Our Episodes in Regime Space 80Fig. 5.1 Loci of Contentious Identities 136Fig. 5.2 The Interaction–Outcome Screen 140Fig. 9.1 Effective Democratization 267Fig. 9.2 Strong-State versus Weak-State Paths

to Democracy 270Fig. 9.3 Mexican and Swiss Paths Toward

Democracy, 1750–1990 273Table 9.1 Sample Mechanisms and Processes

Promoting Democratization 275Table 10.1 Three Robust Processes and Six

Illustrative Cases 315Fig. 10.1 Actor Constitution through

Contentious Interaction 317Fig. 10.2 Polarization 323Fig. 10.3 Scale Shift 333






xiii

Preface and Acknowledgments

Our enterprise began with a failed coup. In 1995, friends, students, andcollaborators of Chuck Tilly organized a gathering in Amsterdam that wassupposed to ease Tilly into retirement. He failed to get the message. Assecond best, McAdam and Tarrow decided to divert Tilly temporarily fromhis other projects into one that would minimize the evils he might other-wise inflict on the world. This book is the result.

Uncertain of their ability to coerce Tilly into compliance with theirschemes, the two conspirators plotted to expand their cabal. Wouldn’t itbe great, they mused, if scholars from the related fields of social move-ments, revolutions, nationalism, and democratization could find a venuein which to explore the possibilities for synthesis across these nominallydistinct subfields? That conversation led to a proposal to the Center forAdvanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for a one-year Special Projectto be devoted to the kind of exploration and synthesis they had in mind.After enlisting Tilly as co-conspirator, a proposal was drafted, ably vettedby Phil Converse and Bob Scott (then Director and Associate Director ofthe Center), and approved by both the Center’s Advisory Committee onSpecial Projects and its Board of Trustees. The plot had thickened!

Once the Special Project began, our broader enterprise took a fatefulturn. Realizing faster than we did how excessive were our aims, Bob Scottencouraged us to seek support that would allow us to stretch the projectover a longer time frame. At his suggestion, we made application in 1995to the Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminar Series, seeking support for athree-year seminar series organized around the broad topic of ContentiousPolitics. To our delight and surprise, Mellon granted our request. Ourthanks go to Harriet Zuckerman for the vision – and the patience – to haveencouraged this unusual variation on the Sawyer Seminar format and to







xiv

Neil Smelser (Phil’s successor as Center Director) and Bob for agreeingto host it at the Center. We also thank the Center staff for their patienceand good humor as they faced the onslaughts of the “contentious crowd”over the years of our association.

But we now faced a new challenge: finding the right core faculty aroundwhom to build that conversation. We were fortunate to attract four col-leagues who joined us in founding what came to be called the “InvisibleCollege of Contentious Politics”. With Ron Aminzade, Jack Goldstone,Liz Perry, and Bill Sewell, we worked as a team for three years to fashiona more interactive approach to contentious politics. One fruit of that effortappears in a companion volume to this one, Silence and Voice in the Studyof Contentious Politics. Others, we hope, will soon join the first two volumes.Our own book profited tremendously from interaction with these friendsand colleagues and we thank them warmly.

Our debts go beyond the core faculty of the Contentious Politics group.Though neither the Center nor our Mellon sponsors required us to do so,the seven of us agreed immediately to involve graduate students – and notjust our own – in the project. Who better to offer fresh perspectives onimportant topics than promising young scholars not wedded to discipli-nary boundaries or subfield conventions? To the five voices of that firstgraduate cohort in 1996–1997 – Lissa Bell, Pamela Burke, Robyn Eckhardt, John Glenn, and Joseph Luders – were added nine others overthe next two years: Jorge Cadena-Roa, David Cunningham, Manali Desai,Debbie Gould, Hyojoung Kim, Heidi Swarts, Nella Van Dyke, HeatherWilliams, and Kim Williams. They not only helped to enrich the largerproject but also made more contributions to Dynamics of Contention thanthey can know. We thank them warmly and hope that their associationwith us was as rewarding for them as it has been to us.

Still others helped. In each of the Mellon project’s three years the sevencore faculty members and their junior associates organized three smallconferences, each focused on a specific topic relevant to a general understanding of contention. Among the topics explored were religion and contention, emotion and contention, the globalization of contention,identity and networks in contention. Each of these conferences featuredparticipation by two or three invited experts. We owe thanks to MarkBeissinger, Craig Calhoun, Bill Gamson, Jeff Goodwin, Roger Gould,Susan Harding, Michael Hechter, Lynn Hunt, Jane Jenson, Arthur Kleinman, Hanspeter Kriesi, Marc Lichbach, John Meyer, Ann Mische,Aldon Morris, Maryjane Osa, Gay Seidman, Kathryn Sikkink, Verta







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Taylor, Mark Traugott, Paul Wapner, and Tim Wickham-Crowley fortheir collaboration.

Our debts go even further. During year three of the project, while we were in residence at the Center, our colleague Ron Aminzade joinedus in organizing a general seminar on the topic of contentious politics for interested Center Fellows. We were lucky to enjoy the participation in this seminar of an unusually large and talented group of our fellow Fellows. These included: Jerry Davis, Jane Mansbridge, RobSampson, Carol Swain, Ed Tiryakian, and Katherine Verdery. We thankthem for their willingness to take part in our sometimes contentious conversations.

Away from the Center, we had to defend what we had learned to themany experts who helped us on our paths to some knowledge of theirareas. They will have to judge whether we have expanded their knowledgeas well as our own. We received precious advice, criticism, information,and technical assistance from Paloma Aguilar Fernández, Benedict Anderson, Ron Aminzade, Ramón Adell Argilés, Mark Beissinger, RichardBensel, Valerie Bunce, Jorge Cadena-Roa, Lars-Erik Cederman, RuthCollier, Maria Cook, Donatella della Porta, Rita di Leo, Rafael DuránMuñoz, Neil Fligstein, Jonathan Fox, Carmenza Gallo, Miriam Golden,Jack Goldstone, Roger Gould, Davydd Greenwood, Ernst Haas, JudyHellman, Steven Kaplan, Peter Katzenstein, Mark Kesselman, Bert Klandermans, Gerry van Klinken, Ruud Koopmans, Hanspeter Kriesi,Hyeok Kwon, David Laitin, Peter Lange, Vina Lanzona, Marc Lerner,Mark Lichbach, James Mahoney, David S. Meyer, Jose Ramón Montero,Reynaldo Yunuen Ortega Ortiz, Elizabeth Perry, Hayagreeva Rao,William Roy, Hector Schamis, Cathy Schneider, Jane Schneider, PeterSchneider, William H. Sewell Jr., Vivienne Shue, Jack Snyder, Bö Strath,Yang Su, Andrew Walder, Elisabeth Wood, Barry Weingast, ThomasWeskopp, Viviana Zelizer, and members of the Columbia UniversityWorkshop on Contentious Politics.

As our project drew to a close, the Center for Advanced Study in theBehavioral Sciences offered still another opportunity to refine our work.A Summer Institute with twenty lively young scholars pitted their ownintellectual steeds against our manuscript in the summer of 2000, withMcAdam and Tilly in the saddle and Tarrow briefly running alongside.Enthusiastic thanks to Kenneth Andrews, Joe Bandy, Neal Carter, DavidCunningham, Christian Davenport, Bob Edwards, Gautam Ghosh, JohnGuidry, Frederick Harris, Peter Houtzager, Jason Kaufman, Deborah







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Martin, Byron Miller, S. Mara Pérez-Godoy, Kurt Schock, Paul Silverstein, Jackie Smith, David Stone, and Deborah Yashar for thoughtful, probing comments on our book.

All books are learning experiences as well as attempts to communicateknowledge to others. Writing this one – perhaps more than most – was anintense learning experience. This was the case for three reasons. First, ourprogram called for analysis of many episodes that lay outside our previousareas of geographical and historical expertise. Second, the programdemanded constant learning in the course of assembling our materials. For if – as we will maintain in what follows – the same processes and mechanisms of contention recur across wide bands of territory and different forms of contention, what we learned from one episode could not be neatly partitioned off from the others. Each foray into newterritory caused a return to familiar terrain for new interrogation of once-comfortable understandings. Third, because no single one of us possessed sufficient authority to exercise a veto power over the others(“Just let him try!”), discussions over content and interpretation were vig-orous – often contentious. Our working sessions proceeded like rotatingseminars, with roles of teacher, student, and kibbitzer revolving dizzilyaround the table.

Where does the resulting book fit into the rapidly expanding field ofcontentious politics and into social science as a whole? Like other schol-ars and teachers, in our book we work through incessant dialogue withprevious ideas and findings, including our own. Hardly a paragraph hastaken shape without reflection or debate on the relation between what theparagraph says and earlier work: This confirms X, that contradicts Y, Zmade the same point somewhat differently, and so on. The book’s first twochapters identify scholarly literatures on which we have drawn extensively,but they do not pinpoint the book’s location with respect to other writ-ings. Earlier versions included much more painstaking specifications oforigins for particular ideas, disagreements with competing accounts, andidentifications of work that paralleled our own. Spurred by complaintsfrom readers of those earlier drafts, we recognized that such references torelevant work were obscuring our arguments while producing a lengthy,ponderous tome.

In rewriting, we eliminated almost all detailed discussions of previouswork. In general, we restricted explicit mentions of other authors to dis-tinctive ideas and findings on which our arguments directly depend. Spe-cialists in the various fields the book traverses may sometimes feel that we







xvii

have given insufficient credit to relevant work by others or insufficientattention to contrary views. On balance, nevertheless, we think that mostreaders will gain from considering our analyses without being distractedby ostentatious finger-pointing toward adjacent literatures.

We hope that the resulting sparseness of references to other people’sanalyses will not suggest disdain for the ideas and efforts of our respectedcolleagues. We have not hesitated to relate our arguments to other workon contentious politics in separate publications, both joint and individual(see e.g., McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 1997; McAdam 1999; Tarrow 1998;Tilly 2001). It will soon become clear, in any case, how much this bookdepends on dialogue and respectful engagement with recent investigationsof contentious politics.

Students of contentious politics may want to decide where we stand oncurrent controversies among structuralists, culturalists, and rationalists. Ifthey look for evidence of the kind of paradigm warfare that often ragesacross the pages of learned journals, they will be disappointed. If ourfrankly syncretic view has a label, it would have to be “relational.” Whileacknowledging the crucial contributions of rationalists, culturalists, andstructuralists, we think the area of contentious politics will profit mostfrom systematic attention to interaction among actors, institutions, andstreams of contentious politics. Our program starts from this perspectiveto explore a variety of areas of contention using the comparative analysisof mechanisms and processes to do so.

How should students of contentious politics who find the book’sprogram attractive proceed? Plenty of previous analyses actually identifyrobust causal mechanisms and use them to explain salient features of contentious episodes. Such analyses should continue to provide practicalmodels for future work. Many of the questions, and some of the answers,posed by analysts in what we distinguish roughly as structuralist, cultural-ist, and rationalist approaches remain important guides for the next roundof inquiry. Instead of burning their manuals and junking their toolboxes,we hope that skilled users of existing intellectual tools will invent new waysof wielding them. We hope they will attempt seriously to refute, challenge,modify, extend – now and then, even verify – our book’s arguments.

Ithaca, New YorkSeptember 23, 2000






xix

Abbreviations

ANC African National CongressBANAMERICA Bank of America (Banco de América)BANDILA The Nation United in Spirit and Mission (Bayan

Nakiisa so Diwa at Layunin)BANIC Nicaraguan Bank (Banco Nicaragüense)BAYAN The New Nationalist Alliance (Bagong Alyansa

Makabayan)BC Black ConsciousnessBCCs Basic Christian CommunitiesBISIG The Federation for the Advancement of Socialist

Thought and Praxis (Bukluraan para sa Ikauun-lad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa)

BJP Bharatiya Janata PartyCBCP Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the PhilippinesCC.OO Workers’ Commissions (Comisones Obreras)CCP Chinese Communist PartyCCTV Chinese Central TelevisionCEOE Confederation of Spanish Employers’ Organiza-

tions (Confederación Español de Organizaciones Empresariales)

COSATU Congress of South African Trade UnionsCOSIP (Later COSEP) Higher Council of Private Enter-

prise (Consejo Superior de Iniciativa Privada)CORE Congress of Racial EqualityCPP Communist Party of the PhilippinesCSCE Commission on Security and Cooperation in EuropeEATUC East Africa Trades Union Congress






Abbreviations

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ETA Basque Homeland and Freedom (Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna)

FAT Autonomous Workers’ Federation (FederaciónAutonoma de Trabajo)

FRAP Anti-fascist Revolutionary Patriotic Front (FrenteRevolucionario Antifascista Patriótico)

FSLN Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional)

IMF International Monetary FundINDE Nicaraguan Development Institute (Instituto

Nicaraguense de Desarrollo)INMECAFÉ Mexican Coffee Institute (Instituto Mexicano de Café)JAJA Justice for Aquino, Justice for AllJOC Young Catholic Workers ( Juventudes Obreras

Católicas)KASAMA The Federation of People’s Organizations

(Kalipunan ng mga Samaban ng Mamamayan)KAU Kenyan African UnionKCA Kikuyu Central AssociationMIA Montgomery Improvement AssociationMIL Iberian Liberation Movement (Movimiento Ibérico de

Liberación)NAACP National Association for the Advancement of

Colored PeopleNAFTA North American Free Trade AgreementNAMFREL National Movement for Free ElectionsNPA New People’s ArmyOAS Organization of American StatesPAN National Action Party (Partido de Acción Nacional )PBSP Philippine Business for Social ProgressPCE Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista Español)PCI Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano)PKI Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis

Indonesia)PLN National Liberation Party (Partido de Liberación

Nacional )PRC People’s Republic of ChinaPRI Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolu-

cionario Institucional )






PRD Party of the Democratic Revolution (Partido de laRevolución Democrática)

PRONASOL National Solidarity Program (Programa Nacional deSolidaridad )

PSOE Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido SocialistaObrero Español )

SCLC Southern Christian Leadership ConferenceSNCC Student Non-violent Coordinating CommitteeUCD Union of the Democratic Center (Unión de

Centro Democrático)UDEL Union of Democratic Liberation (Unión Democrática

de Liberación)UDF United Democratic FrontUGT General Workers’ Union (Unión General de Traba-

jadores)UMALUN Alliance of the Urban Poor (Ugnayan ng mg Maralita

taga Lunsod )USSR Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsVHP World Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad )

Abbreviations

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